Spurrier who rode in at mid-afternoon from some neighborhood mission commented with pleasure upon the cheery “Bob Whites” of the quail whistling back in the timber.
They were Glory’s birds, and this winter he would know better than to shoot them!
But they were not Glory’s birds. They were not birds at all, and those pipings came from human throats, establishing touch as the murder squad advanced upon him to kill him.
The man opened a package which had come by mail and drew from its wrappings the portrait of a girl in 166 evening dress with a rope of pearls at her throat. Its silver frame was a counterpart of the one which had stood on Martin Harrison’s desk that night when Spurrier had lifted it and Vivien’s father had so meaningly said: “Make good in this and all your ambitions can be fulfilled.”
Now Spurrier set the framed picture on the table at the center of the room and it seemed to look out from that point of vantage with the amused indulgence of well-bred condescension upon the Spartan simplicity of his house—the rough table and hickory-withed chairs, the cot spread with its gray army blanket.
The man gave back to the pictured glance as little fire of eagerness as was given out from it.
Just now Vivien seemed to him the deity and personification of a creed that was growing hateful, yet one to which he stood still bound. He was like the priest whose vows are irrevocable but whose faith in his dogma has died, and to himself he murmured ironically, “‘The idols are broke in the temple of Baal’—and yet I’ve got to go on bending the knee to the debris!”
But when he turned on his heel and looked through the door his face brightened, for there, coming over the short-cut between Aunt Erie Toppit’s and her own home, was Glory, carrying a basket over which was tied a bit of jute sacking.
She came on lightly and halted outside his threshold.
“I’m not comin’ visitin’ you, Mr. John Spurrier,” she announced gravely despite the twinkle in her eyes. 167 “I’m bent on a more seemly matter, but I’m crossin’ your property an’ I hope you’ll forgive the trespass.”